CNN's Acosta: It Will Take ‘Dead Journalists on the Highway’ To Shake Off Trump 'Spell'

As if their biased outbursts on CNN weren’t enough, chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta and political analyst April Ryan got the chance to unleash more of their rage at President Trump, in a friendly event hosted by the Newseum in Washington D.C., January 17, called “Journalism in the Trump Era.”

The left-wing Committee to Protect Journalists also sponsored the event, and set the tone for the anti-Trump ranting to come, declaring that it was “abundantly clear” that President Trump “[was] doing serious damage to the U.S. standing globally, and embolden[ing] autocrats around the world.”

After that insane claim, Acosta and Ryan tried to keep the crazy flowing, while answering questions about how dangerous Trump was to freedom and democracy.

The Newseum’s Gene Policinski moderated the panel, and first asked if anyone had ever felt threatened while doing their job.

Acosta answered first, automatically going to the most extreme, saying he “absolutely receives death threats,” as do his other colleagues at CNN. Sighing heavily, Ryan agreed, gushing:

It’s very real for some of us...For me it’s real. I’ve been getting death threats just for asking a question. A logical question...the FBI is on speed dial, so is the Secret Service and local police department.

Acosta added that he read a book recently whose cover art showed a t-shirt with a journalist, a rope, and a tree, reading, “Some assembly required.” Acosta complained the tacky t-shirt was somehow proof that we would soon be seeing dead journalists on the side of the road:

I remember seeing that t-shirt at Trump rallies, during the campaign. We have to get through our minds, that that is un-American. We don’t kill journalists in this country. The moment that that happens, the moment that there’s a dead journalist on the side of the highway, because of the rhetoric coming out of the White House from the President of the United States, is a day that we become something less than the United States of America. Full stop. End of story.

Acosta worried that it would take “an intervening event” of that kind, to “shake people’s consciousness, to sort of snap them out of this...some folks are under a spell where they think it’s okay to go after us like this, and they’re going to have to get it shocked out of their system,” he ranted.

At another point, the panel talked about both April Ryan and Jim Acosta asking the President if he was a racist, after Trump’s alleged “s***hole” comment.

An impassioned Jim Acosta argued it was “totally legitimate question.” Clenching his fists, he declared,“Goddammit, I’ll say it out loud, but it is our right, it is our duty, it is our role to ask the President of the United States if he’s a racist!”

After ranting some more, the moderator tried to interrupt. “Let me just get this out of my system,” Acosta ranted:

My belief is, and it’s a strong belief, is that the President of the United States, is acting in a way, that is simply unpresidential when it comes to deal with members of the press. We should not tolerate this and let me just say this, it is not right to call us the enemy of the people, it is not right to call us fake news, it is not right to retweet images of the president tackling reporters, running them over with trains, squashing them like a bug--

Ryan kept jumping in to Acosta’s tirade with agreement. “This is not China, this is not Russia, this is the United States of America!” she stated.

“I’m sorry but when I got thrown out of the Oval Office or told to get out of the Oval Office, to me that is a badge of honor,” Acosta gushed as the audience clapped.

Ryan added that there were “targets” on the “heads” of journalists.“There are people who literally take this in and think we are the enemy, like we’ve got some agenda against him,” Ryan laughably denied.

She attacked the right, saying, “I am not the enemy...They want to say that we’re the enemy but the real issue is, the truth is your enemy,” she declared.

The museum moderator pushed back, pointing out that many people only hear CNN’s “agenda” when he goes on rants, such as he did, about democracy and the freedom of the press.

Touting CNN’s branding, Acosta responded, “Well, our agenda is to tell the truth and give people the facts.”

Acosta then rebuked his “friend” John Roberts’ network, saying Fox, by contrast, “had an agenda, which is to turn people off of the press. It’s determined, it’s purposeful, and it’s bad for our democracy,” the CNN journalist slammed.

We’ve seen this behavior before from Acosta. Last year, at another media event held by the Newseum, he declared that it was “un-American” for Trump to attack CNN, while it was perfectly acceptable for him to scream at the president during press conferences.

The mission of the Media Research Center is to create a media culture in America where truth and liberty flourish. The MRC is a research and education organization operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and contributions to the MRC are tax-deductible.